Postgraduate medical education: rethinking and integrating a complex landscape.

A key responsibility of the healthcare system is to develop a sustainable workforce through education and training. The complexity of postgraduate medical education and training in Australia requires: recognition that there are many stakeholders (junior medical officers, registrars, teaching clinicians, health departments, governments, colleges and society) with overlapping but competing interests and responsibilities; a national dialogue to clarify the necessary resource investments and to assign explicit accountabilities; and improved coordination and governance, while maintaining appropriate flexibility. In other countries, stronger mechanisms of governance for oversight of postgraduate medical education have emerged, and Australia can learn from these.